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Assuredly, one is coming.

The Spurs will eventually be pressed, maybe at home, maybe in front of a rowdy road crowd. The Spurs also will eventually be in a game that requires they do something in the final minutes.

This one required they only pay attention. And Popovich summed it up afterward. “Obviously,” he said, “it wasn't a fair fight.”

It wasn't physically, nor was it mentally. Dwight Howard made sure of that.

The Lakers have no choice but to offer Howard $118 million in a few months. The only thing worse for the Lakers than Howard turning down the deal might be Howard accepting it.

Aron Baynes, in his first NBA start, scored more baskets than Howard in four fewer minutes. Howard was sloppy (five turnovers) and stagnant. And when the Spurs kept swarming him, he quit.

His ejection was a choice. And when Bryant appeared on the Lakers' bench shortly after for the first time this series, giving the crowd a rare moment to cheer, even the Lakers' coaches saw the symbolism. Bryant, who has never understood Howard's approach, was announcing he hadn't quit.

That's the status of today's Lakers. Their enduring star is broken, and their young one may never grow up. They have more money than options, and so afterward Mike D'Antoni couldn't say what he really thought. He had to defend Howard.

“I just felt sorry for him,” D'Antoni said.

The Spurs might have given in to the same sentiment. In a regular-season game, they might have.

The Lakers, after all, were left with one of the weakest rosters in postseason memory. The Utah Jazz, for example, were a real team with a real rotation when the Spurs swept them in the first round last season. These Lakers were closer to the Sacramento Kings.

But the Spurs convinced themselves of something else entirely. They took Popovich's appropriate-fear message to another level; it was a self-created, alternate-reality fear.

Baynes' surprising start might have helped, since he wasn't about to overlook a thing. But the energy that went through the Spurs was deeper than this. When Parker wasn't spinning toward the basket, DeJuan Blair was moving his feet and muscling the Lakers' big men.

Afterward, a reporter reminded Tim Duncan of his long history with the Lakers. Without Bryant in uniform, did this feel like a chapter in that book?

“You know what,” Duncan began, “it's hard to answer that question.”

Then, he answered it. Firmly.

“I'm playing here and now to get to the next round. I'm not worried about the history of whatever, and the series of whatever. We were here to beat the team that was in front of us to move on. And however you want to put it in the book and put it in whatever chapter, we won this series, and we're moving on, and we're happy about that.”

They should be beyond happy. The Spurs turned this series into an extended practice. They found rhythm they had lost at the end of the regular season, giving Tiago Splitter and Boris Diaw maybe a week to get healthy, and this will help everyone from Mr. Pop to Baynes.